


doors

by Anonymous



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 11:40:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5827267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One door closes; another opens. Iris and Lisa, over time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	doors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dragdragdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragdragdragon/gifts).



> I wrote this in like twenty minutes in the middle of the night, so have fun. <3

 

When Iris is fifteen, she falls in love for the first time. It feels like the forever kind, the always kind.

 

But she doesn't tell anyone, doesn't act on it.

 

She's more than a little afraid to.

 

A week later, a boy asks her out and she says yes.

 

She'd like to pretend she forgets all about the eighteen year old in her gym class, but she never really does.

 

One door closes, another opens.

 

-x-

 

She sees the girl again a few years later in a club. Iris is just shy of eighteen, but her ID says she's almost twenty two and she'd gotten in without a problem.

 

The girl--woman--is even more beautiful that Iris remembers, all dark hair and red painted lips.

 

Iris remembers how it felt to watch her, to listen to her tear down the gaggle of boys that were always catcalling her, calling her names.

 

It's not any different now, to see her pressing up against a horde of drunk and horny men, and then pushing them away with sharp pointed barbs and promises like thorns.

 

Iris _wants_ , and she wants badly.

 

She drinks her bright yellow drink instead.

 

Later, the woman slips into the seat next to her and flips her hair back with practiced ease, raises a perfect eyebrow in Iris's direction and it feels like a question and an answer all at once.

 

Iris ends up kissing her in a dark corner with sugar on her lips and alcohol warm in her belly.

 

She throws up a few minutes later and watches herself lose the girl again anyway.

 

-x-

 

Iris is twenty-two and a couple tests shy of another semester finished. Her feet ache and she slips off her shoes in the middle of the courtyard, curling her toes into the thick wet grass and smiling up at the sunset coloring the sky

 

"Nice shoes," someone says and Iris knows who it is without even looking away.

 

"My feet disagree, but they are quite pretty aren't they?" Iris asks, and then she drops her head to look at the older woman.

 

"They're not the only pretty thing around here," the woman hints, and Iris isn't even surprised she's still so forward.

 

"Yes, you are," Iris manages to say over her own hesitation and fear.

 

The woman smiles at her, and offers a hand.

 

 It's not a date, it's not even the promise of one. Iris takes it anyway.

 

-x-

 

Lisa tastes like raspberries and chocolate, and Iris maps the inside of her mouth with her tongue. She commits every hitch of breath and touch of skin to memory as if she'll be able to hold on to the memory for the rest of her life.

 

She's twenty-two and she's wanted Lisa Snart since she was fifteen years old and the older girl swept into her class on battered crutches and snarked about while the teacher tried to pretend that a bunch of fifteen year olds were more interested in being fit and playing sports than hormones.

 

They have sex on Lisa's ratty couch and Iris can remember the feel of her tongue inside her for weeks afterward.

 

Lisa never calls.

 

But then, Iris never expected one.

 

-x-

 

Want was a different story.

 

-x-

 

When Iris is twenty-four, she runs into Lisa on the sidewalk, and Iris's cooling coffee ends up spilled down Lisa's shirt.

 

Iris offers her a change of clothes and a washing machine, and Lisa doesn't leave Iris's house until her dad's almost back from his week playing juror in Keystone City two days later.

 

-x-

 

A few days after that, Barry's struck by lightning and Eddie sweeps her off her feet.

 

-x-

 

Two years later, Iris is twenty-six and Eddie is dead and Iris is three months pregnant.

 

She steals Lisa's number off Cisco Ramon's phone and calls her the night she finds out the news.

 

-x-

 

Lisa actually shows up to the little cafe around the corner from Picture News and Iris wants to tell her but she doesn't know how.

 

Lisa goes home with her and they spend the better part of a night having sex in her bed (her's and Eddie's bed, except Eddie is gone now and Iris is alone and there's a baby.)

 

Lisa leaves in the morning when Iris starts crying and kicks her out.

 

-x-

 

Two weeks later, Lisa shows up uninvited with Chinese food and a terrible B-movie that leaves them both laughing.

 

-x-

 

The pattern repeats. Every Wednesday night, Lisa shows up with food and a movie and sometimes they have sex but sometimes they just make out.

 

When Iris is five months pregnant, she tells Lisa about Eddie and the baby, and Lisa presses kisses down her belly like a benediction and Lisa never does go home after that.

 

-x-

 

Iris is twenty-seven and two days when she finally tells her dad about the baby. Her dad takes it well, gives her a little grief but promises to support her anyway she needs it.

 

He offers to let her move back in, and Iris declines.

 

-x-

 

Barry takes it better than she'd expected, and Iris asks him to be the baby's godfather. He agrees, and kisses her cheek and promises anything she needs.

 

-x-

 

Lisa's the only one there when she goes into labor a month early, and Lisa doesn't leave her side the entire time.

 

When her father shows up at the hospital and Iris is still in labor, Lisa tries to pull her hand away but Iris doesn't let her.

 

She introduces Lisa as her girlfriend and her dad doesn't even blink, though she knows it throws him.

 

"You taking care of my baby girl?" He asks, and Lisa just smiles and nods.

 

"As much as she lets me."

 

-x-

 

Iris finds out that Barry found out about the baby from his own secret significant other after Jasmine Thawne West comes into the world and Barry spills the whole thing. Lisa smirks and it makes something in Iris want to curl up with Jazz and Lisa and pretend that nothing is wrong with the world.

 

-x-

 

Iris visits Eddie's headstone every year with Jazz, presses flowers against the smooth stone and tells him about their life.

 

After the first few years, Lisa comes too and starts to tell Eddie about all the stupid shit Iris has done for a story, about how much Iris had loved him, about how much she wishes she could have known him too.

 

Iris doesn't know this until afterward, when Lisa presses kisses to the small of her back and whispers truths she'd never tell otherwise.

 

Jazz grows up with a huge family but she loves her moms the most.

 

When she's fifteen, she falls in love for the first time with a sixteen year old juvenile delinquent and Iris tells her to follow her heart anyway, even though she doesn't want her baby hurt.

 

Jazz ends up with her heart broken, but she tells her dad about it anyway and she thinks that maybe it didn't always work out but her moms got her out of heartbreak so maybe she can take something from this too.

 

Jazz ends up falling in love a dozen times after and it never hurts any less but she does it anyway.

 

When she's twenty, Lisa pulls her aside and tells her the story of when she was eighteen and broke her leg and fell head over heels for this younger girl in first period PE and how she never did anything about it until they were both on even footing, how it never lasted until they were both ready (and look, sweetheart, you can't give up on someone important just because it's hard.)

 

Jazz falls in love for the last time with her first love and her grandpa walks her down the aisle and Aiden Rory waits at the end and Jazz smiles at her moms and prays to her dad and her uncle Barry ends up stopping the city from exploding with her uncle Len, the two of them racing around mid ceremony as the Flash and Citizen Cold.

 

Iris and Lisa go home the night Jazz gets married and have sex and eat Chinese food and watch B-movies and everything is good.

 

One door closes and another opens, and Iris knows that it doesn't mean that the first door gets locked behind you. 

 


End file.
